Thursday, May 19, 2011

"Magic of Music" Cake

Music recital season again :0)
I made this cupcake cake for my friend Jennifer.  Her theme was "The Magic of Music" and she was having a magician and everything.  I started out designing the cake for a magician with a top hat and finally realized she wanted a Wizard Magician, not the other kind.  I came up with this hat design.  I still wish I had done some magic wands or something but couldn't figure out how to make them look like a wand and not just a log :0)

I baked a whole 3" tall, 10" cake and then decided I had better use Rice Krispies.  I made a regular batch of Rice Krispie treats from the recipe on the box.  They cooled for a few minutes, then I molded the hat and let it cool.  
 
For the little wizard hats I dipped Bugels snacks in black chocolate almond bark.

I thought for a long time {while driving} about how I could let the hats/bugles set up without having a flat spot on them.  Finally I remembered this huge chunk of Styrofoam that came with our computer.  I stabbed it with rows of BBQ skewers and had a lovely drying rack for my hats :0)  You could be one step ahead of me and put Saran Wrap across the foam before stabbing, but luckily we didn't have any drippage anyway.

Dip and dry.

Back to the hat.  I dirty iced the whole thing.  I was better this time and tinted the icing a color similar to the fondant.  I didn't do this in the past and could either see the frosting through the fondant, or -heaven forbid you have a gap or a hole-you could see the white shining through the black!  Not this time!  I was on top of it!!!

I rolled out the black fondant, covered my plate, then covered the hat.  

Now for the piano band on the hat.  I rolled out white fondant, cut it to the width I wanted, and then marked the space between piano keys with a toothpick.  

Black fondant was rolled out to make the small black keys.  To put them on the white keyboard I used a nice new kids-style paintbrush and painted corn syrup on to work as glue.

I brushed more corn syrup on the hat and attached the piano hat band.  You know, the whole time I was making this I was hoping it would not look too much like a witch's hat.  On that note, this is a fabulous way to make a witch's hat for a Halloween party :0)

Back to my mini hats...I tried to pipe chocolate in circles on wax paper.  It was such an utter disaster, I felt the need to try out modeling chocolate.  The recipe:  10oz chocolate, 1/3c. corn syrup.  You melt the chocolate, stir until smooth, then add the corn syrup.  At that point you are supposed to spread it out on a cookie sheet, refrigerate for a while, then kneed with hands to make soft and moldable.  I skipped the kneading step and just used a cookie cutter to cut out the hat brim circles.  It was really hard.  That might have something to do with me using the rest of my black chocolate almond bark instead of real chocolate.  It actually broke my cookie cutter.  Oooops!

Don't my hat brims make adorable records??? 
I wish records were still an "In" thing.  I think they are so cute.  Anyway, I blopped the brims with colored buttercream and smooshed a hat tip into it.  You can see we also cut out some music notes from the black fondant.  Jennifer is the one with students that are allergic to chocolate.  I had to do an alternative to the chocolate and the music notes were a perfect option.

Here are the little hats.  I attempted, rather poorly, to pipe a little music note on the band.  The cake store just didn't have a single note sprinkle anywhere!  Apauling!!!

So here are the finished hats sitting pretty atop Funfetti cupcakes with traditional butter cream frosting and red nonpareils (we call 'em ("ball-ies").  It just about killed me not to fill these cupcakes, but I have found that most kids don't like the fillings, unless it is some drippy chocolaty thing.  I figured Jennifer didn't want that on her carpet so we skipped it, but the next cupcakes I do are SO gonna' have filling!

Here are the music note cupcakes. 

Finished product.

Oh, I forgot to tell you my funny frustration.  Emmalee wanted to make one too so I gave her some fondant and she was rolling away right next to me.  I turned around...yep, here it comes...and Emmalee says, "Mom, someone poked a hole in the cake!"  There she stood with her Capri-Sun straw in hand.  Sure enough, there was a very cute little hole poked right into the hat, right about where that first full note is glued up at the top :0)  Yeah, Mom was mad.  While she sat in time-out I rolled out the white music notes and made my repairs.  It wasn't too bad since I was already planning on covering the cake with the white notes anyway.  Just a little disturbing to have my 2yr old "helping" with the cake :0)

2 comments:

  1. You are a genius! I wish I had seen this blog before trying to make a viking cake recently. Rice krispies look so much easier to manipulate into submission!
    Great cake!

    ReplyDelete

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